


inside pocket

by van1lla_v1lla1n



Series: pocketverse [1]
Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Tom Wambsgans, Boss/Employee Relationship, Developing Relationship, Hazing, Infidelity, Jealousy, Light Angst, Light Choking, M/M, Mutual Pining, Power Dynamics, Recreational Drug Use, Repression, Sharing a Bed, Smoking, Verbal Humiliation, canonical mention of suicide, depictions of Shiv/Tom but Greg/Tom is endgame, kind of, mention of workplace sexual assault, undernegotiated open marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:48:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27049708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/van1lla_v1lla1n/pseuds/van1lla_v1lla1n
Summary: Sometimes when Shiv was gone, when Tom was alone at night, he felt this urge to go out and find someone young and hot to fuck, just to show her—or maybe himself, if he was honest—that he could do it, just to see if she’d care. He didn’t think she would. But as needy and touch-starved as he felt, the urge was mostly intellectual.More and more often, he and Mondale ended up at Greg’s.In which the author rubs their grimy little TomGreg hands all over Succession season 2.
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans
Series: pocketverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1979858
Comments: 33
Kudos: 54
Collections: The Missing Hours: 3–5 a.m. on the night of March 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I posted part of this earlier as "Disco Man," but I took it down because I didn't like how I'd structured it (sorry!!!). I've reworked and finished writing most of it, and I think it's much better now! My plan is to post the remaining two chapters once a week-ish to give myself time to finish up the last few bits and edit (realistically, chances are extremely high that I get antsy and post early, jsyk).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \- Tom gets sick but still goes to dinner at Roman's and also to work. (Don't be like Tom; wear a mask! stay home!)  
> \- Tom and Greg endure some Roy-typical abuse at the annual executives' retreat.  
> \- Shit goes down at ATN. Greg gets a promotion, and Tom takes him out on the town.

“Maybe we can leave the thing tonight early. And then we can, you know, . . . talk, and everything,” Shiv had said that morning, when he’d suggested they fuck. That was such a typically Shiv response; strategy and a fuck was supposed to be their whole deal. The business side, the plan, and secondarily—the part he’d dared, perhaps foolishly, to expect—the romance. But the second part of the deal never seemed to come around. And Tom was horny, almost unbearably so, so needy for Shiv’s attention that he almost didn’t care about the way she ducked her head and cringed when he asked for it.

He’d contextualized their arrangement—he had. But as hard as he’d worked to convince himself it was okay for Shiv to fuck the odd peasant, his own interest in any odd peasants never quite seemed enough to stave off his guilt at the idea of fucking them. So he jerked off on the frequent nights Shiv was out, feeling slightly nauseous about the whole thing, and went right back to feeling needy afterward.

Tom moped in his office during lunch that day, instead of going out. He wanted to ask Greg out to dinner or to hang out after work, but Greg had turned down his last few invitations because of prior plans with Kendall. Tom wasn’t sure he felt up to a second rejection today, after Shiv’s.

He texted Greg: _I’ll need an afternoon latte._ He wouldn’t, actually, _need_ one. He already felt a little wired, a little headachy. But whatever.

Greg never responded, just rushed into Tom’s office out of breath at 1:45, set the cup on his desk, apologizing about some errand he had to run for Kendall, and loped out before Tom even had the chance to think of a quip.

“Who do you work for again?” Tom asked his empty office.

At the reception at Connor’s new place—his fucking hotel of a house—Greg had found Tom in the crowd, told him about all the red tape they could cut digitizing ATN. Tom was riding on that high, thinking of all the skulls that could roll in his name, when Shiv asked if he wanted to leave early. Just like she’d promised that morning. Tom almost couldn’t believe it—he was so thrilled about Greg’s loyalty and the straight-up virility of his new ideas, and maybe, he hoped, Shiv was feeling that current of potent physicality too.

But she seemed nervous, the way she phrased the question hesitant: “Look, you wanna get out of here?” That _Look_ like a lump in her throat. And then at home she poured him such a tall drink he started to get nervous too. The only topic he could imagine needing to down this much liquor to handle was their arrangement.

And then Shiv said, “He offered it to me. To be next.” _He who?_ Tom thought. _Next what?_ Finally he figured it out— _he, Logan_ ; _next, CEO_ —and his brain was a muddle of excitement for Shiv and confusion about the plan. “Me is just a modification of the plan,” she said. Which, kind of, but it also meant that the plan was no longer the plan.

Shiv sat up on the counter, pulled him to her for a kiss, and he was a little shocked when she grabbed his dick.

“Now?” he said. All the uncertainty had dissolved his earlier notions of virility.

“Yeah, why not?” It was a question he could’ve asked her so many times, but he was the beggar here. The plan was no longer the plan, but at least he was getting the fuck.

The next day his throat was sore, and Tom wanted nothing more than to lay about at home after work and be petted and pitied. But apparently Roman had invited them to dinner, which was a rare enough surprise that Shiv insisted they couldn’t back out of it, since he wasn’t really _that_ sick anyway.

Tom always seemed to end up the butt of some joke at dinners with the Roys, and this dinner was no exception. Tabitha made a jab about him swallowing something—“to help his throat”—forcing Tom to relive the shame of his unabashed interest in a sex act that was apparently not meant to be good for him at all.

Shiv joined in with Roman in going on about his apparently awful taste in suits and his “agricultural” walk, whatever the fuck that meant. He got short with Shiv, told her to fuck off, and as badly as he’d wanted to apologize afterward to ease the awkwardness at the table, he wouldn’t let himself do it. He really did want her to fuck off. He felt like shit; he hadn’t even wanted to be there in the first place.

When they got home he said he’d sleep in the guestroom, and he meant it. But then Shiv had wanted to talk—had needed him to talk to, because she couldn’t talk to anybody else about the possibility of her being next to head up the company. She’d needed _him_. And he couldn’t turn away from that. But it still stung when she asked him to go to the guestroom after all, in the middle of the night, when he felt so shitty he couldn’t sleep. He let Mondale up into the guest bed with him, and maybe it was a partly vindictive move, since Shiv hated him being on the furniture, but the truth was Tom always slept better with Mondale.

At work the next afternoon he asked Greg to bring him hot tea instead of coffee, and Greg showed up with hot tea and two kinds of cold medicine and cough drops and a whole bag of oranges, and Tom might’ve punched him, good-naturedly, if he hadn’t been worried about spreading whatever he had. He thanked him instead, told him to stay across the room.

Greg just shrugged it off, laying everything out on his desk.

“Did Shiv tell you?” Tom asked, surprised.

“Shiv? That you’re sick? No, I just—just guessed, I guess. And you canceled that meeting earlier.”

“Oh. Right.” Tom looked down at all the stuff Greg had brought as Greg stepped back to fidget by the little couch across from his desk. “What, uh, what’s with the oranges?” Tom asked.

“Just, you’re supposed to eat fruit when you’re sick, right? I remember my mom always giving me so many oranges. Like a nauseating amount of oranges.”

“Huh. Well, thanks. That’s very nice, Greg.”

“Hey, I found a new place, finally. One where I don’t, like, bash my head on everything.”

“Out on Staten Island? You taking the ferry?”

“No, no, it’s close. Well, Kendall got it for me. So, really close.”

“Oh, Kendall got it for you? And you can afford it?” Tom ripped open one of the cold medicine boxes, threw the cardboard strips down on his desk.

“Yeah, I mean, like, I don’t think there’s rent? Because he owns it? Although I guess I should ask that, to make sure. Huh.”

“Probably smart, yeah. So does that make Kendall your sugar daddy?” Tom laughed at his own joke, and Greg chuckled a little.

“Uh, no? Like, there’s not, like, an exchange happening? He just had the place, I guess. So. He actually had a party there last night. So it’s still kind of his place, you know?”

“Right, right. Sure.”

* * *

Tom was fine with Logan’s business decisions, really. Any of them, all of them. Whatever. Waystar was Logan’s company; they were his decisions to make, not Tom’s. So Tom saw no reason to even form an opinion about Logan’s ballsy idea to buy out Pierce.

Shiv hated the idea, asked him to say something to Logan. It was absolutely the last thing Tom wanted to do, and he told her so. And then she called him a meat puppet, a fucking _replicant_. And more and more it seemed like that’s really what he was to her—a meat puppet in Shiv’s plan, a meat puppet for Shiv to fuck when it suited her. And what was he without her? Nothing. Just some nobody from the Midwest with a hard-ass lawyer for a mother. So it was either go against Logan and maybe lose his job or go against Shiv and maybe lose everything else.

On top of everything, the annual retreat loomed; he and the other Waystar executives would be in Hungary, and Shiv would be . . . at home. And Tom hoped that maybe if he was good, if he did what Shiv had asked, she would _stay_ at home, instead of _doing a little number_ or whatever the fuck she called it while he was off being a punching bag for her and the rest of her family.

Just when he thought he’d worked up the courage to approach Logan about the Pierce pursuit during the flight to Hungary, Logan blew up. Bad timing. Tom wasn’t sure what was happening, heard Kendall explaining that someone was trying to write a biography about Logan, and felt a pang of something like jealousy when he turned around to see Kendall standing shoulder to shoulder with Greg in a narrow hallway.

Tom gritted his teeth. This wasn’t real jealousy; it was just some spare nausea seeping over from his worry about Shiv, about keeping her happy, about how she was going to spend her weekend while he was gone.

But whatever the feeling was, it still bubbled up later, when he spotted Greg on the walk to the hunting stands.

“You’re spending so much time with Kendall, a girl could start to wonder.” Tom tried to laugh, so it would come off as a joke. Greg didn’t really seem to get it. He seemed nervous. Everybody was nervous after the flight, after Logan’s blowup, but Greg was fidgety, flighty.

And then Greg was asking if he could trust him, and it felt so good that Greg _wanted_ to trust him that Tom couldn’t say no, not really. “Of course you can trust me,” he said. “To a point.”

Greg told him he’d talked to the biographer, had only a pre-meeting meeting, which was meaningless, typical Greg buffoonery. With every secretive word Greg spoke Tom felt his chest billowing up with the knowledge of his significance, his neededness. But at the same time he was a little worried; it didn’t sound like Greg had been very discreet.

“If you tell Logan, he might kill you. So you need to put that in the locker, man, and don’t tell anyone. And pray that you can trust me, okay? Because you just handed me a very valuable piece of capital,” Tom said. He turned away, unsure of what to say, hoping no one else was close enough to hear them. He was frustrated Greg had been so reckless, and he didn’t really understand why he even cared.

At dinner, after the hunt, all the men were practically thumping their chests, even though all they’d really done was shoot some pigs in a fucking barrel. Tom caught Greg’s eye across the table and made a face, and Greg looked down at his plate, smirking. But it really wasn’t a fun time: every minute he wasn’t replaying Shiv’s “meat puppet” comment in his head, trying to sort out how to tactfully bring up the Pierce thing with Logan, Karl was poking him in the side, whispering, “Now, Tom—say something now.”

Logan started going around the room, ranting about someone ratting on his interest in Pierce and talking to his biographer. It wasn’t clear if he thought the same person had done both. Tom watched Greg get nervous, take off his jacket. When Logan stood behind Tom’s chair and asked him what he thought about Pierce, Tom just spat something out, and before he really understood what was happening, Logan had sent him and Karl to stand at the end of the room.

They were trying to figure out what the fuck Logan had meant by the phrase “boar on the floor” when Tom looked up to see Greg standing wide-eyed in front of his chair. Logan was grilling him, and Tom cringed when Greg tried to argue with him about the rules of the game. There were obviously no rules in this situation; there were never _rules_ with Logan. There was only what Logan ordered.

And then Greg was shaking his head in frustration, walking down the room to stand there with him and Karl, singled out, as Kendall and Roman postured and deflected Logan’s questions. Suddenly Logan called their names, Tom first, then Karl and Greg, and told them to kneel. Everyone was chanting “boar on the floor!,” yelling in their faces, as if they all knew what “boar on the floor” meant, when Tom was fairly certain Logan had just made it up on the spot.

Logan was so unpredictable when he was like this. Tom felt not only humiliated and confused to be singled out this way, when he’d done nothing wrong, but also genuinely concerned that Logan might call for a gun and actually shoot one of them as a scapegoat.

So when Logan told them to oink, he fucking did it. Logan said, “Who spoke to Pantsil?” and Greg looked into his face and whispered, “ _Please_ ,” and Tom just stared back at him, furious that he’d be so obvious about having a secret and offended that he’d thought Tom might give him away.

And then, when Logan told them to root around on the floor for a sausage, that whoever didn’t get one was the boar, he fucking did it. He let Greg go for the easy sausage, fought Karl for the other. And of course he lost.

But somehow, just as Logan was calling for his loser’s “prize,” Kendall and Roman’s feuding blew up into a bigger distraction, and Roman was outed as having tipped off the Pierce family, albeit accidentally. Logan seemed mollified to have someone legitimate to blame; Tom was relieved to be forgotten.

After Logan stormed out, everyone dispersed fairly quickly. Tom, reeling, slunk off to his room, avoiding everyone’s gaze. He’d taken a shower and changed into pajamas when someone knocked at the door. Greg. He held up a bottle of booze he must’ve snagged from the dining room, and Tom stepped aside to let him in.

Greg poured them both a drink, scooping in some ice from the ice bucket the staff had left, and leaned against the dresser. Tom sat on the edge of the bed.

After a few minutes of silence, Greg said, “So that was, like, hazing, right?”

“Fuck if I know, Greg. I guess so.”

“Do you think I’m still fucked, or? About the biographer?”

“Do I think _you’re_ fucked?” Tom scoffed. “The real question is, do you think _I’m_ fucked? What are the chances Logan forgets whatever prize he had in mind for the losing boar?”

“I don’t know, man. Maybe we’re both fucked.” Greg sipped his drink.

“I mean, do you think he was going to shoot me? What even was the prize?”

Greg just shrugged.

“Fuck,” Tom said. He was fucking exhausted, and he wasn’t entirely sure that rehashing all this was helping, but he couldn’t stop.

“At least you’re protected, right?” Greg said. “With Shiv?”

Tom laughed skeptically. “Sure, Greg. Shiv was the one who sent me to talk to Logan about dropping the Pierce thing in the first place. It was her fucking idea. I don’t think she gives a fuck if I get skewered for doing exactly what she wanted.”

“But you guys are, like, married?”

“Whatever, Greg. We’re grown-ups. This is how grown-ups handle marriage. You do what you’re supposed to, and if you get shit on then you fucking deal with it.”

“Mmhmm. Right,” Greg said, but he looked away when he said it, brow furrowed.

“Anyway, you’re one to talk about protection. You’re an actual blood family member.”

“Maybe,” Greg said, “but my blood relation is not exactly, like, endeared?”

“Sure, but then you’ve got your sugar daddy to back you up, huh? After tonight I’d say Kendall’s got more sway with Logan than Shiv or Roman.”

“He’s not my sugar daddy, dude. He’s my fucking cou—”

“Whatever. Don’t play your high-and-mighty victim card with me, Greg. You’re a treasured fucking Roy and you’ve got sweet fucking Sugar Daddy Kendall to cover your ass if you get tossed out.”

Tom stopped to sip his drink, but Greg said nothing, just looked vaguely put out.

“You can’t deny it, Greg. You spend all your spare time with him. I can’t even get in for a drink after work.”

“Dude, we went out like last—”

“I saw how buddy-buddy you were on the plane.”

“Oh, fuck off, Tom.”

Tom stood up abruptly, stepped toward Greg. “Did you just tell me to fuck off, Gregory?”

“Yes, I fucking did, Tom.”

Tom got up in his face and grabbed a fistful of his stupid lumpy sweater. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t _get_ to tell me to fuck off, Greg. That’s not how this fucking works.”

He was close enough to see Greg’s jaw tighten. Tom tended to forget about Greg’s ridiculous height, but now it was infuriatingly obvious. Greg opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but no words came out, and Tom just stood there, transfixed. He met Greg’s eye, saw his gaze had softened, his eyebrows slanted, and he looked back down at Greg’s mouth just in time to see his tongue flick out over his bottom lip.

All at once Tom felt drunk, and he swayed toward Greg inexplicably, his hand tightening on the front of Greg’s sweater. And then he heard the clink of ice shifting in a glass and startled back, letting go.

“Get out, Greg,” he said, hating how shaky his voice sounded. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Tom scrubbed his face with one hand, avoiding Greg’s gaze. But Greg didn’t move.

“Get _out_ , Greg.”

“Um. Sorry,” Greg said, finally taking a step toward the door. “Night, Tom.”

As soon as he heard the door click shut Tom sat back down on the bed, heart racing, and downed the rest of his drink. Greg had set his glass down by the door, and Tom got up and finished it too, hoping it would knock him out. It did.

In the morning Tom woke up when he meant to, but lay in bed staring at the ceiling for as long as he thought he could get away with it. He was almost the last one down for breakfast, which meant it was difficult to avoid talking to anyone. He regretted not trying to be there first instead.

He made some obvious crack about having been too drunk the night before to remember anything that happened, hoping the others would follow suit and not bring up the specifics. But when Cyd asked him pointedly if he wanted sausage from the buffet, he could see the image of himself oinking and wrestling for a sausage on the floor reflected back in her eyes, and after that he didn’t bother even to meet anyone’s gaze.

Greg was eating at a table by himself, and hesitantly, Tom sat down next to him, half expecting Greg to tell him to find somewhere else to sit. But he didn’t. They ate in silence for a while, listening to the chatter.

Tom looked up in surprise when he heard Greg say, so softly that Tom barely heard him, “Thanks, man.” He was staring down at his plate, and Tom felt a wash of guilt for yelling at him the night before, when they’d both been through the wringer. He was suddenly glad that Greg hadn’t looked up at him, because seeing his sad doe eyes would have made that guilt sting so much worse.

Tom reached over and put his hand on Greg’s forearm where it rested on the table, patting it once. Neither of them said anything else.

When Tom got home, Shiv didn’t even get up from the couch to greet him. He told her it hadn’t exactly been a great time, but he was so worn out he didn’t really feel like getting into specifics, and anyway Shiv didn’t ask for any.

“I’d like to have more input in team strategy,” he said, and she looked surprised he was asking, like she was trying not to laugh at the notion. But some kind of washy corporate team-up was what they were supposed to be, if nothing else.

“How was your weekend?” he asked. “Anything to report?” He regretted asking before he’d even finished the question.

“Do you want to know?” she asked, finally getting up to kiss him, like a placation. And he didn’t want to know, not really. But the jealousy had dulled, just one more humiliation to add to the weekend stack.

He knelt to greet Mondale in his pen and decided to let him out, ignoring Shiv’s sounds of protest. Mondale raced him to the guestroom, and they went to bed early.

* * *

Back at work the next week, Greg was quiet, and Tom couldn’t blame him. He was still avoiding people himself. It was difficult to show his face in the executives meeting on Tuesday, but he put on his best PR face and pretended nothing had changed.

Later that afternoon, Greg brought Tom coffee he hadn’t asked for, set it wordlessly on his desk. Tom hadn’t spoken to him since the last morning of the retreat.

“Hey, Greg. You alright, man?”

Greg turned halfway back toward him, biting his lip and sighing like it was the hardest question he’d ever been asked.

“Sure,” he said. “I mean, not really, though. Maybe ‘alright’ in the sense that, like, I’m comfortable with the idea of a bomb going off at literally any second.”

Tom grimaced. “That doesn’t sound very alright, Greg.”

Greg shook his head. “It’s not.” He paused then. “How are you, though? Did you tell Shiv, about . . . ?”

Tom chuckled mirthlessly. “No. How do you explain that? ‘Yes, dear spouse, your father told me to oink on the floor and wrestle an older man for a sausage, and I just couldn’t find it in me to say no.’ Any way you phrase it, I sound like a little priss. So no. I didn’t.”

“You’re not, though?” Tom scoffed, like he wasn’t taking that as a compliment. Greg went on: “Logan could’ve, like, shot us, like the pigs. We were pigs in a barrel, pretty much.”

“Don’t play nice with me, Greg. I mean, you’re right—he could have. But we all just have to pretend he wouldn’t, right?”

“It’s true, though.” Greg said it with a self-deprecating sort of smile, and then he met Tom’s eye and blushed. “Anyway,” he said in a rush, “like you said, we can just pretend it’s normal, and then everyone else will have to pretend it’s normal, and that’s where, like, the whole myth of normal comes from, right?”

“Sure. Hey, I’ve got that meeting with Ravenhead in a few minutes. See you later?”

“Right. Sorry.” Greg stepped toward the door, and Tom called after him, held up his coffee cup in a little salute, said, “Hey—thanks for this.”

Tom was trying to finish up his interview with Ravenhead with some kind of racism-proof closure when they heard the bang outside. Tom rushed out of his office, heard someone yelling about shots fired, and his first thought was that they were coming for him, but his second thought was, _Where’s Greg?_

Just then Greg stood up from his cubicle, his doe eyes round and concerned, and they were corralled toward a safe room. Tom looked back to make sure Greg was behind him as they worked through the panicked crowd in the hallway, but Greg was close, arms outstretched like he was ready to take hold of Tom’s jacket.

It wasn’t until they were shuttered in the safe room that Tom remembered Shiv was at Waystar that day too, and after attempting to calm down Greg, who was actively panicking and trying to run outside, he called Shiv in a rush of guilt for forgetting.

But Shiv was in a different panic room. First there was a shooter, coming for him maybe, and then, in addition, he was in the wrong fucking panic room—a very unsafe one in fact, as Greg pointed out—and the security guard refused to take him to the better one. The whole thing was a shit show. And on top of everything, Greg had the balls to make some fucking wisecrack about how fast he’d run into the room, when Greg had been right behind him, running just as fast, reaching for his jacket like a fucking child.

And _then_ —and then—Greg had, what, attempted to break up with him? He’d phrased it in such a Greg way: _do I wanna catch some sunlight if I’m gonna grow_? As if Tom were somehow holding him back, when Tom was the one who’d dragged him up through the ranks in the first place. He had the nerve to propose a “business open relationship,” as if that were a term that would have some kind of positive connotation for Tom.

Tom felt his temper rising as Greg blathered on, emotions he had not and did not want to examine swirling up in his chest until he could barely even think, and then, somehow, his hands were grasping bottles of water, throwing them at Greg. Distantly Tom heard his own voice, shouting at Greg about _not feeling fucking good_ and _I will not let you take what is mine_. Distantly he heard Greg’s shrieks, his pleas to the security guy at the door, the shocked gasps of the other people in the room.

Dodging another bottle, Greg said, “Stop, Tom, we’re friends! You’re one of my best friends!” And Tom sat down in a huff, his head in his hands, and did his best not to cry. What an awful place this would be to cry. Greg sat down on the other side of the room. No one spoke until the security people finally let them out an unbearable hour later, after confirming that the shooting had been a suicide, not an attack.

Greg followed Tom back through the offices, neither of them quite able to avoid sneaking glances toward the cubicle where all this had started. The gravity of the situation hit Tom all at once, and he made an attempt at an apology.

“You know, Greg . . . I know that wasn’t cool, you know, the bottles, the attack.”

“No, it didn’t feel great.”

“I don’t always like who I am, Greg.”

“I get that,” Greg said, and Tom decided to take that as forgiveness. “But don’t you think it might be just the right time for me to make a move?”

“Seriously, Greg? You’re smart, you’re ambitious, you’re loyal, why would I let you go? Come on.” Tom wasn’t really sure where all this earnestness was coming from, but he was exhausted after his blowup earlier, too exhausted to keep trying to play the Roys’ game of verbal cruelty.

Greg shifted nervously. “I have a thing, but I’m . . . reluctant to say. I just have some leverage? But I’m afraid to use it, you know, in case it sours things for us.”

“What leverage, Gregory?” Tom asked. Greg looked around, and Tom flinched when he felt Greg’s hand warm on his shoulder, urging him into a side room.

“I just, um, well, I’m not bringing this up as any sort of threat, but—so, you know when you had me destroy those documents at Cruises?”

“No.” Tom gave him a look, like _What the fuck?_

Greg shook his head like he was trying not to roll his eyes. “Well, I kept a few of them just in case I got in trouble, and because I was worried maybe I was destroying evidence of criminality?”

“Did you now?” Tom asked, smirking despite himself.

“So, like, I don’t know, I don’t want to bring anything up to you in a way that feels, like, horrible, but would it be bad for me to, like, mention those to you now?”

“Are you _asking_ if you can blackmail me?” Tom was unbelievably fucking enthralled by this.

“No, no. I would hate that—I like you—it’s just, you know, context.” Greg seemed almost bashful about the whole thing.

“Very well,” Tom said, the words _I like you_ rattling around in his head, “I accept your blackmail.”

“No, I’m not blackmailing you—”

“But you are though, you piece of shit. Greg, I’m gonna accelerate you, okay? New title, ton more money, nice new office—you’re moving up, you can throw away the training bra, seat at the big table.” Tom grinned, watching Greg’s face for a reaction. “Huh? You like that?”

Greg hesitated, but he couldn’t restrain a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I like that.”

“You fucking—look at you! Where are they, those papers?”

“I’ll never tell.”

Tom fucking cackled at that, said, “You’re a fucking slimeball!” He almost couldn’t believe it. Unassuming little Greg, turning out to be so Machiavellian.

Greg shook his head bashfully.

“Attaboy!” Tom said, clasping his shoulders. “Hey, so you wanna go out and celebrate? Greg’s got big new trousers! Let’s toast to those big new trousers, huh?”

Greg demurred, tucking his hair behind his ear, but he was still smiling like he’d just walked into a surprise party. “Uh, alright, I guess.”

Tom took him to the club that had that great mezzanine, where he’d taken Greg back when they worked in Cruises. But Greg didn’t want to go up there, asked if they could stay down on the main floor with everyone else. Tom still bought them extravagant shots, because he could, because it was the time to do it, because he was honestly so proud of Greg’s cunning, his absolute ballsiness in secreting away those documents.

After a few shots Greg took Tom’s elbow and dragged him out into the writhing crowd. As they danced Tom held onto Greg’s arm, worrying one of them would get swept away. Tom felt like he was caught under an exuberant wave, carried along on the energy of everyone else, of Greg especially, who stayed right next to him and danced in his lanky way, all knees and elbows that somehow never bumped into anyone but him.

When the crowd spat them out for another drink, Greg leaned over and yelled right against Tom’s ear: “Is this weird? Are we being normal?”

Tom pulled back and scowled at him, leaned back in to answer, “Of course we’re normal, Greg. We’re paying out the ass to be normal.” He handed Greg a shot of gold-leaf vodka, gave him a look like, _See?_ But Greg just looked confused. It was too loud to have a real conversation, so Tom nodded back at the dance floor, eyebrows raised, and they went back out.

Maybe the crowd had just filled out, but Tom felt himself pressed closer against Greg then, almost chest to chest. Greg wrapped an arm around his neck, laughing, when some woman bumped into them trying to grind on someone else. Tom felt his hands skim along Greg’s sides, at his waist. He felt the vibrations of Greg’s joy in his chest. He felt Greg’s knees bump his thighs.

In a quiet moment of one song, Tom looked up into Greg’s face to see what he was thinking, how he was feeling, and was taken aback by how serious he looked. Greg was staring down at him, brow furrowed, but when Tom met his eye his gaze softened into something like affection, dropped to Tom’s mouth. Suddenly Tom felt sweaty, self-conscious; he looked away and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth.

And then Greg was pushing past him, through the crowd. Tom followed him in a rush, found him out of breath outside. Greg turned toward him when he approached but looked away abruptly, lighting a cigarette.

“Buddy? You alright?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, yeah. You know, just got a little overheated. Lot of bodies in there, or whatever.”

“Right. Yeah,” Tom said. He held out his hand, and Greg handed him his cigarette. Tom took a drag and handed it back. “Want me to call us a car?”

“Nah, I can walk to my place from here. No worries.”

“You sure? I’ll get one for me anyway, so if you change your mind—”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it, dude.” Greg looked over at him, then back out at the street. “I’m gonna go, I think,” he said.

“Well, just wait a minute, and I’ll close out the tab,” Tom said.

“It’s fine, really. It’s, like, a five-minute walk.” He was already stepping away, walking backwards. “See you tomorrow.”

Tom felt lost. He rushed inside to close out, but by the time he got back outside, Greg was gone. Tom texted him when he got home: _You make it back alright, buddy?_ He tried to wait up for a response but couldn’t quite make it. A text was waiting for him in the morning: _Yep. Thanks for the promotion party or whatever._ On his small bright screen the words looked genuine, but something about them felt like a nail in a tire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've mostly written for a very smut-voracious fandom (lol) so I'm used to tossing a healthy dose of smut into everything, but I can't decide whether to do smut for this or not. if you have an opinion will you let me know in a comment? (or if you're shy and want to stay anon I also have [CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.qa/van1lla_v1lla1n).) thank you kindly :))
> 
> I have a fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2lOngS9cFc30Rrh1rxmGNl?si=1XL1gWQoTsWA-3iel6cCxg) if you’re interested!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tern Haven and Argestes. Tom and Greg are, like, hanging out now? And to Tom's immense relief they finally wrap up the loose ends from the Cruises scandal.

Tom got absolutely eviscerated at the Pierces’. At least he’d been warned he’d be the punching bag this time—a courtesy he always extended to Greg but one rarely extended to him personally. At dinner he tried to lean into the humiliation, laid himself out on the table like a willing lamb for the slaughter, but it didn’t help: he still felt like a steaming pile of dog shit afterward. And Shiv’s dismissal of his discomfort coupled with her classic Roy-power-move faux pas, announcing to every Pierce and every Roy that she was the next pick for CEO, only added to his insecurity.

He sat across the table from Shiv, and when things got dicey he pulled a face at her. But she just stared him down, looked away, laughed with someone else, regifting what he’d thought of as their shared confidence. He thought of the last Roy business dinner he’d been to, on the company retreat, remembered looking across the table and seeing Greg’s eyes widened, his nose scrunched in discomfort, matching the expression Tom felt on his own face. At the Pierces’, as the punches rolled in about ATN, he smiled his unflappable smile and thought of the look on Greg’s face, the whispered desperation of his _Please_ , as they knelt on the floor and waited for Logan to decide their fate.

“What the fuck was that? What happened back there?” he asked Shiv when she got back to their room that night. And she couldn’t tell him. She’d raged at him outside the dining room about floundering under the pressure, failing in his one duty as a punching bag, and then she’d floundered so hard herself she might’ve fucked their whole plan, or whatever remained of it by then. But he could tell she knew that; despite the bitterness in his mouth he didn’t feel the need to point it out.

Greg met them at Logan’s when they got back to New York, said he was going by Gregory now, instead of just Greg. Tom raised an eyebrow at him, and he just shrugged.

“Who’s going to call you fucking Gregory?” Tom asked him at lunch.

“Dude, you _already_ call me Gregory.”

Tom looked at him disdainfully. “No, I don’t. And if I do, it’s probably just to be a prick.”

“Half-true, at least,” Greg muttered.

“Fuck off, _Greg_ ,” Tom said, and Greg smirked down at his plate.

* * *

The next week Shiv left for some kind of business trip. In a last-ditch effort to distract himself from fretting about her potential extracurricular activities, Tom invited Greg out for a drink after work. They ended up buzzed and hungry on Tom’s couch at nearly 9 p.m., and in his foolish alcohol-induced magnanimity Tom agreed to let Greg order them something to eat. After the delivery person called up, Greg ran back upstairs looking smug as fuck with a California Pizza Kitchen bag.

“Two orders of Cajun chicken linguine, comin’ right up!”

“Goddammit, Greg, I’m not eating this shit.”

“Come on, man, what else do you even have here? Gluten-free tuna? Fair-trade crackers? I looked through your pantry. It’s sparse.”

“The fuck, pig man? You snooped through my pantry?”

“Sorry?” Greg shrugged, tucking his hair behind his ear, then smirked when Tom reached for one of the takeout boxes.

“Don’t say a fucking word about this,” Tom said.

After they ate, Greg started to fidget a little, talked about calling for a ride.

Tom scoffed. “No! Why? Just stay over. We have the guestroom. Don’t you wanna hang out with Mondale?”

“I mean, alright. If that’s okay, I guess. But doesn’t he have to, like, stay in his cage all night anyway?”

“It’s not a _cage_ , Greg. It’s just a pen. But no. When Shiv’s out of town me and Mondale sleep in the guestroom. He’s not allowed in the master bed.”

“Right, but—so, in which room? Would I be?”

“In the guestroom. Don’t make it weird, Greg. The bed in there’s massive, don’t worry. You won’t even know we’re there.”

“I mean, um . . .”

“Or you can sleep on the floor. I don’t give a fuck.”

“Fine, yeah, whatever. That’s fine, that’ll be fine.”

Tom loaned Greg some pajamas, which were too short on him and frankly looked a little ridiculous. Mondale was always so thrilled to be called up onto the bed, and he roughhoused them for a while, jumping between them and standing on their chests, before curling up next to Tom.

Tom had gotten Greg an extra blanket so they wouldn’t have to share. When they were finally settled in, Tom realized the lights were still on.

“Greg, would you get the light?”

“Dude, but, like, I just got the blanket straightened out.”

“Come on, I’d have to crawl over Mondale. He never gets the bed. Do you want to bother Mondale, Greg?”

Greg groaned but got up and flipped the lights. After he lay back down he wiggled and shuffled around until Tom couldn’t take it anymore.

“Greg. What the fuck is going on over there?”

“Sorry, just—this blanket’s just, like, kind of abbreviated? My shoulders get cold, and then when I cover them my feet get cold, and—”

“Alright, alright. Fuck it, let’s just share. Alright?” The quilt he was using was huge; Tom just hadn’t wanted to deal with fighting for it all night like he did with Shiv, who insisted on sleeping at the far edge of the bed, not touching. He held out the edge of the quilt and Greg scooted under it, close enough that Tom could feel the warmth of his body, smell his deodorant.

Tom curled onto his side around Mondale, and just as he was about to fall asleep Greg said, “Um.”

“Jesus. What?”

“Just, do you think we should maybe, like, not talk about this?”

“Talk about what?”

“Just, like, us sharing a bed? Like, should we maybe not mention that?”

“In what world would it possibly even come up? Go to sleep. If I’d known you were going to be this unbearable I would’ve sent you home.”

Greg whispered, “Sorry,” and said nothing else, and finally Tom fell asleep.

He woke up slowly, warm and snug, Mondale curled into his chest under his arm. He usually slept a little rough with Shiv out of town, but he felt better rested than he had in weeks. Reluctant to open his eyes, he stretched his legs out a little, met resistance behind him, and remembered Greg was there.

Greg was spooning him, his arm stretched out over Tom’s waist like Tom’s was stretched over Mondale. Three spoons stacked snug in the middle of a massive drawer. Physically Tom felt unbelievably comfortable, but mentally he was a little uneasy, stuck between sleeping dog and sleeping Greg, not wanting to move too much and wake up either of them—especially Greg, who might get embarrassed about the whole thing.

Tom tried to go back to sleep, but he felt too jittery. Then Greg huffed in his sleep, his arm tightening around Tom’s waist and his hips shifting closer against Tom’s until he could feel the unmistakable pressure of Greg’s erection against his ass. Tom did not want to get out of bed, did not want to acknowledge that this was even happening, but he decided it would be worse if Greg woke up with his dick basically in his boss’s ass and realized Tom had just let it happen.

Tom shifted, rolling to his back slowly enough, he hoped, that Greg would think he was still asleep if he woke up. Greg breathed deeply and rolled over too, stretching, and Tom yawned loudly like he’d just woken up. Once he’d done it, it felt a little heavy-handed, but too late. Mondale stood up, shook out his sleepiness, and jumped off the bed, and Tom slid off behind him.

He made coffee, sat around scrolling the news until he heard Greg shuffle in, yesterday’s rumpled clothes back on.

“Morning, buddy! How’d you sleep?”

“Yeah, good. Pretty hard, I guess.”

Tom guffawed, blushed, said, “Good, great. Uh, well, there’s coffee, if you want some. Shiv’s supposed to be home soon, though, if you wanted to head out before then.”

Greg blinked at him. “Yeah, probably should, right?”

Tom didn’t know why he’d said it. It was like Greg had implanted this idea in his head that it mattered, that their sharing a bed, platonically, was somehow significant, and maybe it would just be easier for everyone if Greg were already gone when Shiv got in.

Greg didn’t stay for coffee. He hesitated by the door, said, “See you Monday,” and then he left.

Tom stripped the sheets off the guest bed. Just to make sure Shiv didn’t notice he’d let Mondale sleep there.

* * *

Tom pretended disaffection while he and Greg hobnobbed among all the bigwigs at Argestes, to make up for Greg’s fidgety ogling of every half-famous person there. They’d had a brief scare when Logan approached them to avoid Sandy Furness, begging them to talk to him so he looked busy. But Logan stayed calm, the resort too public for any overt abuse.

Like a good little assistant Greg had gotten Tom in on the culture hike, though he’d ruined it with the news that they couldn’t use their carefully planned slogan in Tom’s talk the next day because of PR concerns. But Tom was satisfied with the alternative they’d come up with on the drive over to the reception that night.

At the reception the first night, Tom talked up some woman who seemed honestly a little starstruck by his position at ATN. She was hot enough, maybe—the type of woman he’d consider fucking to make Shiv jealous. But she kept blathering on about her rich family and her power-jockeying and some IPO or whatever, and Tom couldn’t stop looking around for Greg.

They’d gotten split up in the crowd, and Tom didn’t trust Greg not to get himself into some kind of mortification. He’d spotted him once with Roman, and just now he thought he made out his massive head above the treeline. But then Shiv, who was not supposed to be at Argestes at all, appeared next to him, elbowing her way into his conversation. She made him look like a buffoon and dismissed the other woman with a polite smile and an innocuous remark. And then she dropped the bomb that an investigative piece was being published about Cruises.

“Were you trying to bang Nia Bayton?” she asked. He sputtered; he’d gotten a bit distracted, thinking he’d spotted a blue-striped collar that looked like Greg’s, and the question was so absurd he thought he’d misheard her.

“I wasn’t,” he said, “but if I was, that would actually be, under the arrangement, okay. You know?”

“Tom. It’d be a bit fucking awkward. She’s a real person.”

“And none of the people you’ve fucked have been _real people_?”

“Nia has a face.”

“Sure. Right,” Tom said. “Well. I’m so glad you’re here!”

Tom went back to his room a bit early to tidy his things, figuring Shiv would be staying there too. He texted her the room number, and when she got there he was doing a practice run through his talk for the next day.

“Hey,” she said. “Let’s talk. Can we talk? Do you think I should be on that panel tomorrow, with Kendall and Roman? With this piece coming out about Cruises?”

“Look, Shiv, I’m just a little worried about my talk tomorrow. You know? This is a big deal for me. We need to save some face for ATN right now. Okay? Can we talk later?”

“Sure,” she said, looking away, her lips a thin line. She sat down in a chair right in front of where he was standing to practice, and tapped her pen on the desk, swiping through something on her tablet. Tom tried to pick up where he’d left off, but every time he stumbled over a word Shiv would look up with a raised eyebrow like she was barely holding back a snide remark.

After a few flustered attempts Tom gave up. “Actually, I think I need to do some last-minute prep with Greg. We had to make some slogan changes earlier after a discussion with the legal team.” He gathered up his notecards. “I’ll be back later,” he said.

He was almost out the door when Shiv called him back. “Tom. Listen.”

He turned around warily. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about earlier. You can fuck whoever you want. I don’t give a fuck. Alright? Just . . . remember what I said about people with faces, okay? With all this shit coming out about Cruises we really don’t need an extra dose of scandal.”

“Right. Well—” he held up his notecards. “I’m just going to Greg’s. Back later.”

Greg answered his door half-dressed, in pajama pants and an unbuttoned dress shirt, toothbrush in his mouth.

“I’m using your room to practice my talk,” Tom said, pushing past him. Greg said something muffled around his toothbrush that sounded suspiciously like _What the fuck, Tom_ , but Tom ignored him. He was moving Greg’s shit off the desk when Greg came back in from the bathroom.

“I was about to sleep, dude. What’s wrong with your room?”

“Shiv. Twenty minutes, Greg. Can you be quiet, please?”

Tom faced the desk to practice, but in the mirror above it he could see Greg sitting up in bed scrolling through his phone. He hadn’t taken off his shirt, but he hadn’t buttoned it either, and Tom felt himself starting to blush. He hurried through his talk, careful to keep his eyes on his own face in the mirror, making sure he looked pleasant enough but not clownishly enthusiastic.

“Sounds good, man,” Greg said when he was done. “Nice and polished.”

“Do I sound too earnest?” Tom asked.

“I’d say there was a distinctly appropriate amount of earnestness.”

“Alright. I guess that’ll have to be good enough.” He stacked up his notecards, saw Greg put down his phone and look up at him through the mirror.

“You staying here, or?”

Tom gripped his notecards and made a face. “What?”

“Oh. I mean, you just said Shiv was—”

“I have my own suite, Gregory. Why would I stay here?” He turned toward the door, not looking at Greg.

“Will you turn the light off on your way out?” Greg asked.

“Nope.” Tom shut the door quietly behind him and leaned his forehead against it for a moment. Then he headed back to his own room, and to Shiv.

* * *

Shiv’s little weekend outings had been cropping up more often, and as secretive as the Roys could be about their business dealings, Tom just couldn’t believe they were all business-related, especially when Shiv’s faux pas at the Pierces’ had gotten her tossed out on her ass from Logan’s book of favor. Maybe she had her own thing going, some angle she was working to get written back into the book. Whatever it was, she hadn’t brought it up with Tom.

She still kissed him goodbye in the morning, still said she loved him, but the actions felt perfunctory, formulaic. Maybe she did love him—he felt that in her own way, maybe, she did—but Tom was growing increasingly uncertain that it was a love he really enjoyed.

Sometimes when Shiv was gone, when he was alone at night, he felt this urge to go out and find someone young and hot to fuck, just to show her—or maybe himself, if he was honest—that he could do it, just to see if she’d care. He didn’t think she would. But as needy and touch-starved as he felt, the urge was mostly intellectual.

More and more often, he and Mondale ended up at Greg’s. After the first time Greg gave up on trying to play host and let Tom do whatever he wanted, which was mostly lounging around reading the news or watching some show—things he could easily have done at home. Sometimes Tom would cook dinner for them, something he didn’t see any reason to do just for himself. Sometimes he let Greg coax him into playing some video game.

If Greg thought it was weird how often his boss wanted to come over to his apartment on the weekends, he didn’t say anything about it. And Tom, for his part, tried not to think too much about his ready comfort around Greg, or about whether it was jeopardizing his authority over Greg to feel so comfortable around him.

He tried not to read anything into the easy way Greg moved past him in the kitchen or elbowed him competitively during a game. He tried to ignore the ache in his chest when Greg sat at the far end of the couch, the weight of his own arms when Greg walked him to the door at the end of the night and patted him on the shoulder. In his head he heard Greg say _one of my best friends_ more than he was ready to admit.

It was just that having someone to hang out with made it easier to bear the stress of his distant marriage, of preparing for the Cruises fallout and the corresponding investigation.

After Tom’s interview with the internal investigators, Shiv went to London to chase down Logan, who was still for the most part pretending she didn’t exist, and to visit her mother. He’d tried to get her reassurance that the investigation was a sham, that there was no way Logan would toss him out like a Cruises girl who’d refused to give somebody a blowjob. But she was so caught up in her posturing with Logan that she seemed hardly to notice Tom was even speaking to her. So while she was gone, Tom decided it was time to make damn sure his ass was covered from all angles: time to take care of Greg’s documents stash.

He invited himself over to Greg’s, couldn’t imagine that Greg would have plans, let alone other friends, but when Greg opened the door for him there were a bunch of yuppie fucks on his couch sipping vegan fucking beer and gabbing about some kind of renewal. Tom pulled Greg into the next room and asked him how his interview with the investigators had gone. He let Greg blather on for a few minutes about his stress levels and his new haircut before he cut him off.

“You know the papers? The copies? I want them,” he said. Greg looked at him.

“I did my part of the deal, you got your office, put your little Gustav Klimt poster up there, and now it’s time for me to habeas the corpus.”

Greg tried to tell him they were his insurance policy, but what he didn’t seem to understand was that having them meant that he was _not_ insured against Tom.

“Well, they’re not actually here,” Greg said, “so I don’t really know what to tell you.”

“Okay, Greg. Look. You played your hand very well. I like it. I do,” Tom said. Greg smiled shyly, looking down at his shoes. Tom looked back to make sure the yuppies were still distracted. “But we need to end this now. Or I tell Logan that you took copies of sensitive documents.”

“I keep them at the office,” Greg said.

Tom looked at him incredulously. “You keep them at the office?

“Yeah, ’cause they’re work. I’ll go in early and I’ll give them to you first thing tomorrow.” He started to walk off, but Tom snapped his fingers at him and beckoned him back over.

“Right, but, except I can’t trust you. It’s not personal, I just can’t trust you, so in a _friendly_ way,” Tom said, fiddling with Greg’s tie, “I’m staying here tonight, and I’m gonna travel in with you tomorrow, and I’m gonna go with you to wherever you have the copies, and later, together, we’re gonna dispose of them, off-premises—” Greg started to protest, but Tom spoke over him. “And if you squeal, or you try to take copies, I’ll break your legs.”

“Dude, I have guests right now. I’m having a dinner party.”

“Well, then, I guess you better be a good little host and set out an extra plate, huh?”

Tom did his best not to piss off Greg during the dinner, staying quiet even when his little friends said naïve shit about the corporate fucking elite. He didn’t want Greg to get agitated and try to kick him out, and he was also planning to steal Greg’s bed later, so he was trying to shore up a little advance goodwill.

Tom drifted mentally after dinner, sipping his bullshit vegan beer and not listening at all to the discussion happening on Greg’s IKEA-adjacent furniture. He had tried not to think too much about the last time Greg had spent the night at his place. In all the times he’d been over to Greg’s he’d never stayed overnight, never even seen his bedroom. And Greg never brought it up either, never asked him to stay. Maybe because Tom had been so awkward the morning after last time. Or because he’d been such a prick when Greg asked if he was staying over at Argestes.

But sometimes, lying in bed in the middle of the night at his own place, Tom couldn’t help recalling how nice it had felt to wake up with the warmth of Greg’s chest on his back, an arm around him. His need for that kind of closeness had become an almost persistent ache. Shiv hated being touched at night, and he was too embarrassed about it to ask her. When she was out of town he felt almost weightless in the bed, like he’d float off if he closed his eyes, and he’d taken to sleeping with a pillow behind him or back-to-back with Mondale.

It was weird to hope that Greg would want to share the bed, so Tom didn’t hope that. He just planned to take it and see what Greg did.

Greg tossed a pile of blankets on his lap. “Here. Enjoy the couch. Sleep well,” he said.

“I’m sorry, what? I think the fuck not, Gregory.” Tom pushed off the blankets and stood up. “I’m taking your bed. You can sleep on the fucking couch.”

“I’m not sleeping on the couch in my own place!” Greg was chasing after him down the hall, where Tom knew his bedroom was. Tom found a closet first; next door, then.

“Christ. It smells like a frat house in here, Greg.” Greg had a crystal fucking ashtray on his nightstand full of roaches and half-smoked joints. “We need to get you a HEPA purifier or something. Or, like, open a window occasionally. Fuck.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly expecting people to just be barging into my bedroom. If you want to sleep here you’ll just have to deal with it.” He looked embarrassed though, shoved a pile of clothes under the bed with his foot. And he did crack the window.

The bed was unmade, but the linens looked nice enough. Tom could handle department-store sheets. The mattress was long enough for a giraffe but of no luxurious width.

“I need some pajamas,” Tom said. Greg shuffled through a drawer, grumbling, and threw some sweatpants at him. “Greg, these are ratty as fuck.”

Greg ignored him, just said, “Hurry up and change,” as he slammed the door behind him. Tom changed, straightened out the duvet, and was about to turn out the light when Greg barged back in. He sat on the other side of the bed and lit a joint, leaned back against the pillows.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Tom asked.

“I’m not letting you eminent-domain my own bed. Stay on your side.”

“Aren’t you going to ask if I want some of that?”

“Nope.” Greg put out the joint in his quaint, nasty ashtray and turned out the light.

“You’re a pretty shitty host, Greg,” Tom said.

“Not to my _actual guests_ , Tom.” Both lying on their backs, their shoulders almost touched. Greg rolled to his side with his back to Tom, and Tom followed suit, trying not to bump Greg with his ass.

“Don’t be mad,” Tom said. Greg sighed and rolled over when Tom kept talking. “You understand, right? Those papers put me in a royally fuckable position.”

Greg repositioned and jostled Tom with his elbow. He muttered _sorry_ , then patted Tom’s shoulder. “I don’t like it, Tom. I don’t like it at all. But I get it.”

With his face buried in Greg’s pillow and Greg’s weight behind him in the bed, Tom passed out soon after.

He woke up delirious when his alarm went off, earlier than usual. He was on his stomach, overheated where Greg’s arm and leg were thrown over him, pinning him down.

Greg muttered something drowsily when Tom pushed him off to reach his phone and groaned when Tom jostled his shoulder. “Wake up, you big lug. We’ve gotta get going to beat the crowd into the office.”

Greg sprawled out on his back without opening his eyes. “Fuck off, Tom. Five minutes.” Tom wished he hadn’t said anything, wished he hadn’t already tried to wake Greg up, because looking at him now in the morning light, all he really wanted to do was lie back down.

“I’m using your shower,” he said instead. “You better be dressed when I get back.”

Tom was gleeful to have the documents back in his possession. He invited Greg over to his place for the sacrificial burning that night, but Greg was too antsy for it to be very fun. Still, he was relieved to be done with the whole affair—at least until they found out Gil was calling for congressional hearings, and fucking Hugo offered him up as the testimonial lamb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy your double dose of ~definitely platonic~ bed sharing ;)) As expected I got impatient and posted ahead of my self-imposed schedule 🙃 Look for the final chapter probably around the weekend.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The congressional hearings. Greg gets to be a little mad, as a treat. Tom gets sad about it and shows up at his apartment unannounced. A family vacation. And a rather non-canonically optimistic ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my brain said "fuck your stupid schedule, we're going full tilt at these windmill dolts" so here you go
> 
> I promised smut and I did not lie. It just got a little out of hand (oops), and I was worried it was a bit much to really fit here, so I decided to post it separately! I'll post a link in the endnotes.

Tom fucking bombed at the congressional hearings. He knew it, Shiv knew it, everybody knew it. Nobody was denying it. He was convinced that he’d been set up to fail, that Logan or somebody had decided they could save some money on briefing him and just let him shovel all the shit.

Greg bitched him out in front of everyone—in front of Logan, Shiv, Kendall, Gerri, _everyone_ —without even giving him the chance to recover from his miked-up humiliation in the Senate hearings chamber, blaming Tom for losing his quarter-billion inheritance, which was objectively a fate Greg had chosen for himself, and for getting him sent to jail for life, which was laughably unlikely. Logan kicked Greg out into the hall and descended on Tom with a well-practiced face of utter disappointment.

While Logan and Kendall were being prepped, Tom slunk out into the hall to look for Greg. Greg was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, elbows on his knees and face in his hands. He looked up when he heard Tom incoming and immediately scrambled up, backing away down the hallway.

“I really do not want to talk to you right now, dude,” he said.

“Come on, Greg. Please just—”

“No, Tom. Fuck off,” Greg said, stepping into a bathroom down the hall. Tom chased after him, slamming the door open and locking it shut behind him. Greg was leaning back against the counter, probably getting drippy sink water all over his suit.

“Tom, seriously, dude, fuck all the way off. I can’t fucking deal with you right now.” He looked so agitated, his hair messy and his hands flexing against the countertop almost violently.

“That’s too fucking bad, Greg.” Tom crossed his arms, pacing in front of Greg. “The entire fucking planet hates me right now. I can’t deal with that from you too.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Greg said.

“You don’t sound very fucking sorry.”

“That’s because I’m not, Tom. I’m not fucking sorry at all. This is your fault. You dragged me into this shit. You wrote my name in that ledger. And when I’m the poorest rich man in America locked up in prison for life, it’ll be your fucking fault.”

Tom stopped in front of him. “Look, man. You’re not going to jail. You’re not. And even if— _if_ —you did, there’s an entire fucking _bloodline_ of billionaires queuing up to bail you out.”

Greg fucking growled, pushed off the counter and started pacing where Tom had been. Tom dried the counter off with a paper towel and took Greg’s spot leaning against it.

“God, I just want to punch you in the fucking face right now, dude,” Greg said. His fists were shoved in his pockets.

Tom stepped forward, blocked his pacing path. “Do it then. You should.” He swallowed. “I deserve it. You know I do.” Greg towered over him, staring down into his face, and Tom hadn’t realized Greg even had the capacity to look this angry.

And then Greg’s massive hand was around his throat, pressing him back until he was pinned against the wall. Tom tried not to think about when that wall might last have been cleaned. Greg squeezed his throat, a threat, not hard enough to bruise or even to restrict his breathing. Tom closed his eyes to escape his stare, and Greg slid his hand up under Tom’s jaw, forcing his chin up.

“You do deserve it,” Greg said, and his voice was so close Tom flinched. He didn’t dare open his eyes, forgot to breathe, listening to Greg’s shallow exhales. “But—” Greg said, and just then someone rattled at the door, and when Tom opened his eyes, his throat cold, Greg was taking long strides across the room to wrench it open.

Tom stood in front of the sink and splashed some water on his face, smoothed out his hair. He didn’t look up to see if the person who’d come in was anyone he knew. Back in the prep room and on the flight home, Greg ignored him entirely, and Tom didn’t try to speak to him again.

The week after the hearings, Tom got home from work to find a note from Shiv: _Last-minute trip. Be back in a few days. Love you._ He felt like he should go out, or go to Greg’s, or do something to distract himself from the humiliation still sitting in his gut from being so thoroughly fucked on C-SPAN. But he couldn’t. He sat at home and wallowed, made a halfhearted attempt at getting drunk solo, and ended up passed out on the couch with Mondale shortly after sundown.

He was sullen at work the next day. Greg didn’t say much when he brought Tom coffee and mail, mostly kept his distance otherwise. Greg had been acting that way all week, but it felt like an extra dose of shit with Shiv gone too—like he was just as unlikeable, as unbearable to be around as he always feared. And maybe he did deserve it.

He wanted to invite Greg out by way of apology, or at least try to find something to say to him, but he didn’t want to go out. Anyway Greg had taken to leaving without saying goodbye, so he didn’t get the chance. Tom stayed at the office late, shuffling paperwork that didn’t need to be shuffled, and when it started to get dark out he struck out walking. He stepped into a store and bought an embarrassingly large and disgustingly cheap bottle of wine, and, pretending to himself he was lost, he ended up at Greg’s apartment.

Upstairs he sat on the floor next to Greg’s door, not really sure what he was doing there. He texted Greg: _Can I come over?_ And when Greg sent, _No_ , he texted back, _I’m outside_. Greg sent, _Seriously?_ but seconds later he was opening his door.

“What are you doing out here, man? Like, how long have you just been sitting there?”

“I just got here. There’s no need to freak out, Greg.”

“Well, are you okay? Did something happen? What’s happening?”

Tom stood up, shoved the wine into Greg’s hands as he walked past him into the apartment. “Nothing’s happening. Shiv’s out of town, I just got shafted in full view of the federal government, and I just felt a little aimless, you know?”

“Well, can’t you be aimless at your own house? Like, why do you need to be here?”

“I don’t want to be aimless at my own house. I wanted to talk to you. And someone’s been avoiding me, so it seemed like just showing up was the only way to do it.”

Greg said nothing to that, just stood there by his kitchen counter turning the wine bottle in his hands, and Tom took it back from him.

“Let’s crack this open, huh?” Tom said, elbowing Greg. “Wanna get fucked up? You can order California Pizza Kitchen, I don’t give a fuck. I’ll pay for it.”

“I’m not hungry. Why are you here, dude?”

Tom put a glass of wine in his hands. “Shut up, Greg. Drink this. Order your fucking linguine.”

“I said I’m not hungry.”

“Jesus, Greg, I’m just trying to be nice.”

“No, you’re not, Tom. You’re trying to, like, buy my forgiveness, or something.”

Tom sat down on the couch and stared at the wall, taking swallows straight from the bottle. The wine tasted like burned woodchips and syrupy vinegar and he deserved every awful drop.

“Maybe I am,” he said. “I feel like shit. It’d be nice to feel less like shit about one thing. It’s shit being the family shitstain.”

“You could, like, apologize?”

Tom felt slapped. He looked up at Greg, who was hovering across the room. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for dragging you into it. I didn’t think—fuck, I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t think it’d turn into this.” He looked away and took another swig of wine.

“Well, Tom, I’ll do my best to forgive you. But I am still mad.”

A moment later Greg sat down at the other end of the couch, and even as Tom felt a wash of relief at Greg’s forgiveness, he felt the burn of shitty alcohol in his throat spread into a familiar ache in the center of his chest. And then he broke.

“I fucking hate it when you do that.”

“Do what?” Greg asked, confused.

“Sit all the way over there. And I hate that I hate it. I hate that I even fucking notice.” He swigged the wine, and Greg slid to the center cushion on the couch.

“Is this better?” he asked. “I just, what—I guess I don’t really know what you want?”

“No. It’s not fucking better. I hate it,” Tom said.

“Will you just tell me what’s going on? I feel like something is happening right now, like in your head? And it’s kind of stressing me out, to be honest, like, not knowing what it is.”

Tom huffed out a breath, scrubbed his hands over his face. “I just—I’m the fucking dunce of the company right now. I just got swirlied in a democratically elected toilet, there’s shit particles all over my face, and meanwhile my wife is out of town, I don’t even know where, probably fucking someone else. And I used to feel like such shit about it. But right now I’m not sure I care, and that feels really fucked up, you know? I just wanted to be here. Even if you hated me.”

“I don’t hate you, Tom. I’m just mad. We’re friends, right? So it’s not fucked up, to want to be here. Like, when you’re lonely, or sad.”

Tom’s jaw tightened. “Right.” He chewed his lip, said, “I’m not sure that’s it, exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

Tom got up and stood behind the counter, took a sip from the bottle. Greg turned around on the couch to look at him.

“Tom?”

He chuckled a little manically, staring at his hands on the countertop. “I’d rather be here with you than at my own house. I’d rather be here even when Shiv is home. Maybe especially then.” He met Greg’s eye briefly and looked away. “I fucking hated it when you wanted to move to a different department. But maybe you should. Maybe then this would feel less fucked up. I just—” He took a deep shuddering breath. “I just want you to touch me. All the time. It hurts me when you don’t. Fucking Christ.”

Tom braced his elbows on the counter, bent to hide his face in his hands. He heard Greg moving around but didn’t dare look up. And then he felt Greg’s arms wrapping around his waist, Greg’s chest folding over him, pressing against his back.

“I can touch you,” Greg said softly. “I didn’t know you wanted me to.” Tom slowly straightened up, and Greg let go of him. Tom turned to face him, fiddled with a button on Greg’s shirt, not quite able to look him in the eye.

“I wanted you to,” he said. And then he looked up, and Greg bent down and kissed him. It started soft, almost chaste, until Tom exhaled and relaxed and reached up to hold onto Greg’s neck. Greg stepped forward, pressing Tom back against the counter, and opened his mouth to slide his bottom lip over Tom’s. After another moment Greg growled softly in frustration.

“You’re too fucking short, man. Sit up,” he said, slapping the counter. Tom obeyed, smirking, and Greg wrapped a hand behind his neck to pull him into another kiss. Tom gripped the front of his shirt. He groaned when he felt Greg’s tongue smooth in his mouth, and Greg grabbed his ass and slid him to the edge of the counter, pressing their torsos together. Tom felt like a feral teenager, making out like this, but he couldn’t get enough.

When they were both breathless Greg stepped back, out of reach, and just looked at him.

“Should we stop?” Tom asked. “We should stop, right?”

“I don’t know. Should we?” Greg asked, still breathing hard. “I don’t think I really want to.”

Tom nodded, slid off the counter, took a swig from the bottle of wine. He rested his forehead on Greg’s chest, pressed forward until Greg was pinned against the opposite counter, and Greg brought his hands up to rub Tom’s shoulder blades, the back of his neck. Tom tugged at the hem of his shirt, slipped his hands underneath to skim across Greg’s skin, listening to his breath shudder in his chest.

“Is this, um—is this covered? In your arrangement?” Greg asked.

“The official terms of the arrangement are basically ‘we’re grown-ups, so we’ll know.’ More recently revised to ‘fuck whoever you want, Tom.’ I’d say that covers just about anything, right?” _Maybe not Shiv’s cousin, though._ Tom sighed, squeezing Greg’s sides so hard he flinched. “Do we have to fucking talk about it right now?”

“Um.” Greg swallowed. “No. I mean, um, we’re kind of already in it, right? So, like, whatever?”

Tom straightened to look at him. “You’re a real seductress, huh, Greg? ‘Wanna fuck?’ ‘ _Sure, like, whatever_.’”

Greg shoved him, just hard enough that he stumbled back a few steps. “Fuck off, Tom.”

“No,” Tom said, getting back up in his face, gaze flicking between Greg’s eyes and his mouth. “You don’t get to tell me to fuck off, Gregory, remember?”

Greg bent his knees to look straight into Tom’s face, watched Tom’s mouth fall open, felt Tom’s hand on the back of his neck, like he was expecting a kiss. Softly, Greg said, “Fuck off, Tom.”

Tom’s hand tightened on the nape of his neck and with a sneer he said, “Fuck you, Greg.”

“Fuckin’ do it, dude.” Tom kissed him hard, and Greg grinned against his mouth.

Tom gasped when Greg bit at his neck, asked, “Do you want to?”

“Want to what?” Greg said against his neck.

“Fuck.”

“Fuck, what? What are you asking?”

“Jesus Christ, Greg. Fuck _me_. Do you want to fuck _me_?”

Greg looked up at him, grinning. “Why, yes, Tom. I’m so glad you asked. I would like that very much.”

* * *

Logan had organized what he was referring to as a “family vacation”—“family” apparently now including Gerri and Karl and Laird and Frank—on the family boat in the Mediterranean between the hearings and the big shareholder meeting. Shiv, for some reason, thought this was the perfect time to set up a threesome with some staff member on the boat, saying she wanted Tom to see “the benefits of the arrangement.” Tom hadn’t quite sorted out how to tell her he’d already seen the benefits of the arrangement, and that he was not at all interested in seeing such benefits with a woman he didn’t know, who worked for the family, while the entire family was around.

They were all hoping that the vacation would turn out to be a celebration of Roman’s success in scoring a deal that would let them go private. But when Roman showed up from his hostage situation in Turkey in a predictably foul mood, he dropped the shit bomb that the deal was off. So the family vacation yacht became something more like an Agatha Christie–style murder island while they all waited to see who Logan would choose to kill off in the name of shareholder atonement.

The whole situation was very schemey—everyone suspicious of everyone else, watching for a misstep or the mildest indication of disloyalty. So Tom and Greg agreed mostly to keep to themselves.

“We don’t want to look like we’re in some kind of cahoots,” Tom told him. “We want to look innocuous, Greg, like two stray little kittens, not like a united bloc of turkey vultures.”

The first evening, after Logan announced more officially that someone there would have to be sacrificed to the shareholders, Shiv wanted to call down their threesome partner. Tom wriggled out of it at the last minute, citing the general murder vibes on the boat. His excuses worked, even though he emasculated himself in the process, and Shiv didn’t stick around to hang out after that, saying she had to talk to Logan anyway. Tom fiddled around in their room for half an hour, unsure of how long Shiv would take, but when she didn’t come back he snuck over to Greg’s room, trying not to look terribly suspicious in the hall.

“Tom, what about the vulture bloc?” Greg looked as antsy as Tom felt, his eyes wide and his hair messy.

“Hush. Fifteen minutes, Greg. Nobody will notice for fifteen minutes. Just—let’s lie down. Do you want to lie down?”

Greg slouched back against the headboard, and Tom lay down next to him, tugged on his wrist until he slid down too. They lay facing each other, on their sides, and Tom took Greg’s hand and held it to his chest.

“I’m kind of freaking out,” Greg said.

“I can tell. I am too, honestly. Hey, it’s going to be fine, though.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can’t promise that it won’t be you, or both of us, no. But I can promise we’ll make the best of it. Okay, buddy?”

Greg closed his eyes, and neither of them said anything for a few minutes.

Tom had finally closed his eyes too when Greg said quietly, “Is this real, Tom?”

“This, us? Of course it’s fucking real, Greg. What the fuck?” Tom said it more fiercely than he’d meant to.

“Even with Shiv?”

Tom pulled Greg’s hand up to kiss his knuckles. “Yes. Even with Shiv. I haven’t worked out the details yet, but we already have our arrangement, and . . . let’s see how tomorrow goes first. Alright?”

Greg looked down at their clasped hands, and for a second Tom thought he was going to tear up. But when Greg finally said, “Alright,” his voice was clear.

“You should probably go.”

Tom chewed his lip. “Yeah. Probably.” He rolled off the other side of the bed, straightened his shirt. Greg lay in the bed until Tom was almost to the door, and then he got up in a rush and grabbed him by the shoulders to turn him around and hug him tight.

“It’ll be alright, Greg. We’re a couple of rich white guys, right? We’ll work something out.” Greg chuckled hesitantly, loosening his arms around Tom’s shoulders. Greg slid one hand up to grip the hair on the back of Tom’s head, shaking him a little.

“You better be right.”

Tom wanted to kiss him but suddenly he didn’t know how to do it, so he just smiled instead. He hoped it was reassuring.

“Good night, Greg.”

Despite their best efforts to come off as unrelated and unimportant individuals, the next morning at breakfast Roman recommended them for the chopping block as a Tom sundae with a little Greg cherry. Shiv called Tom the logical choice to be cut, to Tom’s surprise but not, apparently, to anyone else’s. So the day was not off to a great start, and it didn’t help that Logan didn’t seem in any rush to make a decision, instead dismissing them from the table to “go for a swim” like they were in some kind of Mary Kate and Ashley resort movie instead of a goddamn corporate nightmare.

Shiv suggested they spend their last day alone on a beach in a nearby cove, to get away from the stress. Tom didn’t have time to find Greg before they left, but he figured he’d sort out where they’d gone through the gossip train.

Tom knew he was being picky about the cove, complaining about sea urchins and overgrown beach weeds, but he couldn’t help himself. He hated everything just then, didn’t really care to be out alone with Shiv, who’d thrown him to the sharks, and meanwhile leave Greg fretting by himself in the lion’s den. But the only control he had over the situation was where the boat would drop them off, so that was the control he took.

When they finally found a spot he could live with, he stared out at the water, pensive, while Shiv read. After a while she seemed to notice he was just sitting there brooding.

“You wanna talk?” she asked.

“Why would I wanna talk?” He threw a pebble into the water.

“Fine,” she said, raising her book back up in front of her face.

“You fucking toasted me, Shiv. You fried me.”

She tried to explain she needed to seem objective if she was going to help him, but Tom didn’t believe a word of it.

“I love you,” she said, as if that made up for it. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Tom shook his head, incredulous. “You told me you wanted an open relationship on our fucking wedding night.” He felt conflicted bringing it up, given that he’d taken advantage of it too, in a way, but he’d endured so much pain before that that he couldn’t restrain himself. And if he was honest, if he gave himself space to think about it, it still hurt. It was just that he’d found another space for himself too, one where he could maybe be happy.

“It was just an idea,” she said, as if her ideas weren’t immediately written into their marital constitution.

“I think a lot of the time, if I think about it—I think a lot of the time, I’m really pretty unhappy,” he told her.

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and he meant it. But then words kept spilling out of his mouth. “I love you, I do. I just, sometimes I wonder if the sad I’d be without you would be less than the sad I get from being with you. You think you love me, Shiv, but you don’t. You love me for what I do for you. And I don’t want it to be me tomorrow, I really don’t, but at least it would be a way out.”

“What the fuck are you saying, Tom?”

And he still didn’t really know. He hadn’t woken up that day intending to break up his marriage. “I guess, I guess I’m fucking done with this, Shiv. I don’t know. I don’t know if Logan’s going to cut my head off or not. I guess this won’t help, will it?”

Shiv said nothing for a while, processing all that. “I’m sorry, Tom,” she said, and for once she really sounded like she meant it. “We can, um. We can keep this between us. For now. Until he decides.”

Tom nodded, squinting out over the water. “I’m sorry too,” he said, and then finally brought himself to look over at her. She was as gorgeous as she always was, even now, with reddened eyes, with a confused expression that didn’t suit her at all. “Thank you,” Tom said.

Logan killed Kendall. Even when the two of them emerged nearly tearful from Logan’s impromptu office to join the rest of the family at dinner, nobody quite seemed ready to believe it, to let themselves relax. The dinner was quiet, and everyone disappeared to their own rooms soon afterward. Tom went to bed early, worn out from the sun and the stress and his unexpected talk with Shiv. She never came back to their room, must’ve found somewhere else to sleep.

Tom hadn’t gotten a chance to catch up with Greg, and when he got out for breakfast the next morning, Kendall’s helicopter had already taken off, apparently with Greg in it. When the press conference came on later in the day, he understood why.

Greg didn’t pick up when he called just after. He left a message: “Call me, you lanky fuck.” When Greg finally called him back they’d all just stepped out of the car on the airport runway. Tom stepped away to answer.

“Hey, you fucking slimeball. I’ve only got a minute. We’re about to get on the plane. I’ll be at your place in, like, fourteen hours, okay? I better not find out you’ve fucked me when the plane lands.”

“Dude, I haven’t. I swear. Is everything okay there? Are people pissed?” Greg sounded antsy; there was a lot of background noise.

“Uh—you know how it is. I gotta get on the plane, buddy. See you soon.”

“Okay. Safe, uh, happy travels.”

Greg answered his door after Tom’s first knock. “Did you even go home first?” he asked.

Tom pushed past him with his luggage in hand. “No, I’m staying here now.”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, is that going to be a problem for you? You wanna fuck me and then just kick me out?” Tom turned around in the living room to find Greg right behind him, almost bumped face-first into his shoulder.

“Dude, I’m not kicking you out. Just, like, what about your house? Where you live? Like, with your wife?”

“I don’t have a wife anymore, Greg.”

“What? Did Logan kill her too?”

“Jesus Christ, Greg. No. We’re separating.”

“Um—I’m sorry?” He tucked his hair behind his ear. “But, like, what happened?”

“You’re not fucking sorry, Greg. Shut the fuck up. I don’t know. I just, you know, called it off. Yesterday. It just kind of happened.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know, Greg. Maybe because Logan was chopping heads off? Maybe because you helicoptered off into the sunrise with Kendall before I got the chance?”

“But what about Mondale?”

“I’ll go over and get him later. And my other shit. I’m fucking exhausted right now, though. I’m using your bed.”

“Uh, okay. Cool.” Greg shadowed him into the bedroom. “Do you need, like, some water? Or a snack?”

“What are you, a fucking flight attendant? Lie down.” Tom took off his jacket and his shoes and lay down in Greg’s bed, and Greg hesitantly settled in next to him. The bed was just wide enough for both of them, and somehow Greg managed to lay just close enough to the edge that he was barely touching Tom.

“Well, don’t just skulk over there at the edge.”

“Do you think I should get a bigger bed? You know, if you’re staying here, like, for a while.”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous, Greg.” Tom grimaced up at the ceiling. “Hey. You didn’t fuck me, right? With those documents?”

“I didn’t, but I could.”

“Greg—” Tom started to sit up to glare at him, but Greg pushed his shoulder back down.

“It’s a joke, Tom!”

“Well, it’s not fucking funny.”

“Dude. Don’t worry about it. Your name’s not on anything. There’s no way it gets back to you. I’m the only one who knows you were involved. We’re going to kill Bill and we’ve already killed Logan—those are two really big heads. The vultures, right? They don’t want our little kitten heads anyway.”

“Right. I just really don’t want to be fucked. You know?”

“I know. And you won’t be. I got you, dude.”

“Do you, Greg? Because I really don’t deserve it.”

“I know. But I do.”

Two weeks later Greg quit his job at Waystar; Ewan had gotten him a better-paying and less conscience-straining gig at PGM. Tom quit too, knowing he’d get canned if he didn’t, now that his and Shiv’s separation was public knowledge. After the first few days without Greg there, he’d realized it wasn’t worth trying to stick it out anyway.

“I’m looking for an assistant,” Greg told him when he brought in the boxes from his office. Tom glared at him, sat next to him on the couch.

“Fuck you, Greg. I’m not working for you. I’ll just be your little housewife for a while, huh? Until I think of something better to do.”

“Isn’t that still kind of working for me? In a way?”

“But it’s on my own terms, Greg. And it’s just until I can find a shepherding gig or some shit, and then I’ll fuck off to the woodlands of Canada and you’ll all finally be rid of me.”

Greg frowned, and Tom elbowed him. “What?” Tom asked.

“I just don’t know if I’m ready to move to Canada yet. I’m just getting settled in at PGM, you know? I think I could really shoot up the ladder there.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have to come, you big dummy.”

“You wouldn’t want me to?” He sounded so dispirited that Tom turned to look him in the face.

“Of course I would. I just figured you’d be ready for me and Mondale to get out of your glamorously shaggy hair.”

“No.” Greg shook his head. “No, actually. I thought you’d stay here. You’re basically moved in anyway, right? You can be my roommate-slash-housewife-slash-fuckbuddy as long as you want to.”

Tom squinted at him. “Are you asking me to go steady with you, Gregory?”

And Greg shrugged bashfully, said, “Um, well, I guess so. If you want to call it that.”

“Very well. I accept."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the smut: Speak ["smut"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27124780) and enter. (It picks up right after the line “Why, yes, Tom. I’m so glad you asked. I would like that very much," when they're at Greg's apartment before the ~family vacation~.)
> 
> I have another little smutty oddball I couldn't find a place for in the plot, so I may post that as part of the series later too.

**Author's Note:**

> edit 10/23/20: on reflection I think the scene after the hearings where Greg sorta-kinda chokes Tom in the bathroom is a little ooc but I'm a sucker for whatever that trope is, so I'm keeping it, thank you & good night!
> 
> I'm on Twitter at [@van1lla_v1lla1n](https://twitter.com/van1lla_v1lla1n) and Tumblr at [@van1lla-v1lla1n](https://van1lla-v1lla1n.tumblr.com/). feel free to dm me abt tag revisions <3
> 
> Finally, your comments are very dear to me, so thank you for them! 💕


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